The Mallen Litter

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Be quiet, Benjamin. Pull your trousers up and go to the nursery. You’ll do what you’re told.’

  ‘I’ll not, I’ll not, Mama.’ He backed from her. Then with a swift movement he dived towards Ruth. And now he was clinging to her.

  The colour that had drained from Barbara’s face returned at a rush. Again indignation swept over her, but a different kind this time. She felt she was being affronted, pushed aside. Her child openly preferred a nursemaid to herself, a nursemaid who had whipped him.

  ‘Don’t go, Ruthie, don’t go.’

  Ruth Foggety looked down into the boy’s face and her own broke into a smile and it acted like a soft wind stilling a rough sea, and her voice added oil to the water as she said, ‘Well, now, Master Ben, what did I tell you? You brought it on yourself. I warned you, didn’t I?’

  The oil on the water was suddenly engulfed as the storm rose again and enveloped her as she ended, ‘I told you what I’d do, didn’t I, I warned you. Any more of your fiddlefartin’ and I’d skelp your backside for you and I…’

  ‘Enough! Go upstairs this moment. This very moment.’ As Barbara went to grab her son from the contaminated presence of the nursemaid Harry literally stayed her hand by catching hold of her arm and pulling her about to face the stairs. ‘Come on. Come on,’ he said. ‘Storm in a teacup. Let’s talk this over.’ Then over his shoulder he looked to where the girl was standing, her face once more showing defiance, and he said, ‘You take the children upstairs, girl, and wait there.’

  Barbara, preceding both Harry and Brigie down the stairs, allowed her indignation to dash along yet another channel. How dare he! This was her house. He had taken the authority from her hands. It was too much, too much. One thing and another, she couldn’t stand much more. She was tired, depressed, bored. Yes, yes, bored.

  Life was almost like being back again, closed in by the hills, the mountains. What was life for anyway? She lifted the daffodils from the table and thrust them into the vase before she rang the bell. And then she made an effort to calm herself down when she heard Harry say, ‘Get your things off. Get your things off, lass, ’cos you’re not goin’ to be asked.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Brigie.’ She now went towards Brigie and they kissed and enfolded each other. Then she said, ‘Sit down, sit down. But…but you see what I mean.’

  As Brigie sat down and smoothed her grey serge skirt over her knees she said, ‘But if you let her go, will the next one be any better? The last two were nincompoops. In your letter last week you said you were very pleased with her. She was clean and bright and the children seemed to have taken to her. That’s what you said.’

  Barbara sighed as she answered, ‘Yes, that’s what I said, but you’ve seen for yourself.’

  She looked from Brigie to where Harry had flopped down in the winged chair to the side of the fireplace, and what he said was, ‘Get us a cup of tea, girl, an’ then I’ll tell you what I think.’

  When Ada Howlett, answering the bell, was given the order to bring in tea, Harry remarked, ‘Well, of the two I know which one I’d put me money on. That one looks about as bright as Manchester mud. With all the unemployment and empty bellies in the town I’d have thought you could have done better than that.’

  He was an aggravating man was her father-in-law. Every word he said to her had, she felt, a thread of criticism running through it. She replied primly, ‘When they’re near the town I understand they like to live at home. If they live further out in the country they are quite willing to live in, although they can demand less money.’

  ‘What you payin’ her?’

  ‘Five shillings a week.’

  ‘Aye, well, I suppose that’s fair for this kind of work. But my lot would spit in your eye if you offered them that, I mean in the factory in Manchester.’

  ‘You can’t compare factory workers with domestic servants, Harry,’ Brigie put in sharply.

  ‘No, I’m not sayin’ you can’—he bobbed his head at her—’but I think it’s about time you did, for some of them work just as hard, except those back home. My Manchester lot work like blacks, but you and Kenley between you, you ruin that lot back at the house. The money! Eeh, the money I’ve to pay out! It’s nobody’s business.’

  ‘Be quiet, Harry.’

  And when Harry became quiet Barbara looked at him and wondered at the power her adoptive mother had over everyone who came in contact with her.

  They had their tea, and they discussed the situation regarding Ruth Foggety, and two hours later when they left Barbara was much calmer and she had promised to consider Harry’s advice on the matter before sending the girl packing.

  Just before Brigie stepped up into the carriage she turned to Barbara and, looking straight into her face, she asked, ‘Were…were you expecting a visitor today, dear?’

  ‘A visitor? No; only you. Why? Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, no…no reason. No reason at all. Perhaps it was because everything in the house looked so inviting. You have made it very lovely, dear.’

  Barbara returned Brigie’s stare for a moment, then said, as a daughter might to a mother, ‘Well, I always take special care that things are just so when I know you are coming. You don’t think I could forget you have eyes in the back of your head?’

  They exchanged tight, prim smiles; then Brigie climbed into the carriage and waved Barbara goodbye.

  The carriage had hardly turned from the drive onto the main road before Brigie gave her whole attention to looking out of the window.

  ‘What is it? What you looking for?’

  ‘I’m looking for the hired carriage that I’m sure followed us here.’

  ‘You’re daft, woman.’

  ‘That’s your opinion, and you are entitled to it.’

  ‘Because you saw him in the town, you think he came on your trail?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well, well, I hope you’re wrong ’cos if you’re right I’ll have to tell our Dan.’

  ‘No.’ She turned sharply from the window. ‘You must never do that.’

  ‘Oh now! You look here, woman, look here. There’s nobody going to make a monkey out of our Dan and me stand by and watch it. Oh no!’

  ‘Please.’ She was sitting close to him and had taken his hand now. ‘Please,’ she repeated, ‘do as I ask, at least for the time being. I…I know Barbara. She has been slighted, spurned; she would never dream about looking his way again, she’s over-full of pride.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but don’t forget what the rumours say. That Jim Waite of theirs has a big mouth apparently and he doesn’t keep it closed in the market. He gets talking to Watts.’

  ‘Watts’ work is to drive the coach, not to gossip.’

  ‘Ssh! Ssh!’ he pointed towards where the coachman sat on the top of the box outside, and Brigie said, ‘If he can’t hear what you say then he can’t hear what I say. But I repeat, he’s a gossiper.’

  ‘Well, I find a bit of gossip handy at times; it’s well to know what goes on roundabout. An’ from what I can gather Michael Radlet’s a morose man with no thought for anybody but his daughter, and when a man’s unhappy things can happen. You should know that.’

  Brigie turned slowly from him, and looked out of the window again. Then she started visibly and only stopped herself from exclaiming aloud as she saw the hired cab standing in a narrow side lane; and beside its door a tall man with his back to her. But she knew that back as well as she would have known the face.

  Her mind worked rapidly before she turned to Harry and, her tone soft with no semblance of Miss Brigmore or even of Brigie in it, she said ‘Don’t do anything. I mean don’t mention anything to Dan about our suspicions until we are sure, will you not? Please, please, Harry; do this for me.’

  ‘How can you be sure, you’re not here often enough?’

  ‘I’ll…I’ll know the next time I see her, and we’ll make it soon, next week.’

  He stared at her for a moment before saying, ‘And yo
u’ll tell me, you’ll tell me the truth?’

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth, or what I know of it.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He nodded at her. ‘But we’re going to the warehouse now to see our Dan and put him wise to what’s happened this afternoon. That young lass is the best thing that’s hit that nursery yet, I should say. What do you say?’

  She smiled at him now, ‘I agree with you.’

  ‘Fiddlefartin’s an’ all.’

  ‘Harry!’ She was Miss Brigmore again.

  He leant his head back against the leather upholstery of the coach and his body shook with his chuckling. ‘Eeh! By! I thought I’d fall downstairs when she came out with that, and so natural like. But’—he brought his head upwards—‘what do you think of young Ben clinging to her like that after she had skelped him, and right well for his backside was blazin’. There’s something funny about that, odd in a way, don’t you think, and a bit frightening, a child turning from its mother to a maid?’

  ‘Most children of today are more acquainted with the nursemaids than they are with their parents. You know that.’

  ‘But not in this case. Dan’s never had the bairns imprisoned upstairs. He’s like me, he wouldn’t be for it. No, that little scene went deeper, there was more in it than met the eye. Aye, much more.’

  Yes, there was more in it than met the eye. Brigie knew this. She could give a full explanation of it in a few simple words: the child realised his mother didn’t love him.

  She had watched Barbara with her three children but she had never seen her stroke Ben’s black hair as she had done the others’; comb it, yes; dress him, yes; feed him, yes; but never love him. At first she had thought that she shouldn’t judge because she wasn’t with them often enough, but as time went on and the visits became monthly affairs she knew that the first-born of the triplets was like a thorn in Barbara’s flesh; although he was but a child, she saw in him a reflection of the portrait that hung above the mantelpiece in the cottage. Ben was a constant reminder that she was the daughter of Thomas Mallen.

  That the boy would grow up like his grandfather, Brigie had no doubt, and in her heart she was both glad and sorry. Glad that Thomas would live once more, but sorry that Ben was being deprived of love when he most needed it.

  It was eleven o’clock at night on the same day. Ruth Foggety sat in the kitchen on a straight-backed chair at the corner of the bare wooden table and awaited her fate. The mistress had spoken to her only once since the rumpus on the landing, and that to say ‘You will wait till the master comes in, he will deal with you.’

  She had been long enough in this establishment to know who was the real master. In the place she had been before it was the missis who had ruled, and she thought it was the same here. But now she wasn’t quite sure. She considered the master was a kindly little bloke, a man who would do anything for peace she would say. And yet she didn’t know. Look at the way he had gone for Mrs King last week, her who called herself a cook. Cook indeed! God! She couldn’t even skin a rabbit, it went to the table with half its coat still on. And the cabbage she dished up. Honest to God! You would think it had been boiled in the dock water itself. The master had said as much, but in his own way of course. She had been surprised to hear him talk so, stiff, quiet, but right to the point. ‘I want no excuses,’ he had said. ‘If you haven’t improved by the end of the month then I’d advise you to look for another post.’

  When she thought about it, it had surely been the mistress’ job to complain about the meals. And, of course, she had. Oh yes, she had heard her. But it was himself who came out of the dining room that night, a plate in his hand and, pushing it under the cook’s nose right in the kitchen here, had said, ‘Mrs King, would you mind explaining to me what this is?’ Sarky he was, right sarky. Old Ma King hated his guts. But she herself liked him. Yes, she did.

  She nodded to herself at this point of her thinking. She must admit she liked him, but she didn’t suppose she’d be able to keep it up when he gave her the push. She wished he would hurry up and get it over with. He had been upstairs a good half-hour; he hadn’t got in till after ten. He had been to a meeting, or some place such as businessmen attended in the City.

  Although she was waiting for the door to open, when it did she was startled and jumped to her feet.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down.’ Dan pointed to a chair. Then he himself pulled another chair from the far wall and brought it to the table and sat down opposite to her before he said, ‘Well now, what’s this I’m hearing?’

  She looked at him straight in the eyes before answering, ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard, sir, but whatever it was, it was likely the truth. The top an’ the bottom of it is I skelped your son’s backside. An’ I’ll tell no lie, I’m not sorry I did.’

  ‘What had he done?’

  ‘He put a string across the top of the stairs, looped it round one of the banisters so that he could pull it and trip me up. And where would I have landed but at the bottom, with me neck broke and me past knowin’ a thing about it?’

  Dan looked into the round bright eyes, into the round open countenance, and the fearlessness of it evoked in him an admiration, while at the same time the thick North Country voice and the idiom of her language that brought colour into everything she said made him now want to laugh, as it did whenever he heard her.

  He had found difficulty in understanding some of the men he had set on in the warehouse when he had first come to Newcastle, especially those from further down the river. There was one in particular who hailed from Shields who, to his mind, needed an interpreter. At times the rapidity of the men’s speech irritated him, and this, coupled with the dialect words made it almost as unintelligible as a foreign language. Only of late, as he had listened to this girl, had he put the word colour to their speech.

  He said now, ‘That was very naughty of him. As you say his action could have caused serious consequences, and I can understand that you are angry…’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t angry.’

  ‘You weren’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mean, you slapped him without feeling angry, you did it, one could say, in cold blood?’

  ‘If you put it like that, sir, yes. At first, that was. You see I promised it to him, ’cos he’d stuffed everything in me bed but the rabbit, and the only reason that wasn’t there was ’cos it wouldn’t stay still.’

  ‘You mean he tried to put a rabbit in your bed?’ Dan widened his eyes but kept his features straight.

  ‘He did, he did. And how in the name of God he got it up the ladder into the loft I don’t know, sir.’

  It was too much. Dan bowed his head. His eyes became bright, he made a sound in his throat. He had a mental picture of Ben, assisted, of course, by his two lieutenants passing the rabbit up that steep ladder.

  A sound from her throat brought his head upwards and he looked at her under his lids to see her fingers to her lips, her eyes sparkling; and then she said, with laughter breaking her words, ‘Oh sir, he’s a caution, a joker. He’ll grow up to be a joker. There’s never a night but I find something in me bed. If it isn’t anything alive it’s something that nearly makes me jump out of me skin. Last night it was a bunch of holly leaves. God! They felt like a bucket of Irish snakes.’

  As Dan’s head went down again her hand pressed more tightly across her mouth, and so together they smothered their laughter.

  A moment later, his eyes blinking, Dan rubbed the water away from the corner of them as he said in a voice that he now tried to make sound sober and correct, ‘He climbs that ladder unassisted?’

  ‘Oh, aye sir, like a linty. An’ he must have done it for some long time ’cos he goes up and down it quicker than I can.’

  Dan rose to his feet and with an effort he kept his face straight as he said, ‘Well now, Ruth, the mistress is willing to give you another chance but you must be careful of your treatment of the boys.’

  Ruth drew in a long breath that extended her full breasts further, befo
re saying, ‘Oh, I will, sir, I will.’ She nodded at him politely. ‘An’ I don’t think I’ll have the same trouble again ’cos I got the better of him. He knows now I can give as good as he sends. Did the mistress tell you he stuck up for me?…He did, as young as he is, he did. Mind you, sir, I can’t believe he’s just on five, not like the others. But there he was, stickin’ up for me on the landin’, saying he didn’t want me to go. I got a gliff, in a nice kind of way though. Oh, I don’t think I’ll have much trouble with him in the future, sir.’

  Dan now nodded back at her before saying. ‘I hope not, Ruth. And just one thing more. The mistress would like you to…’ How could he put this? Could he say ‘Stop using such terms as fiddlefarting’? Barbara had not uttered the word. It had been his dad who had told him; what Barbara had said was that the girl had used abominable language. He coughed and went on, ‘What I mean to say is, the mistress would like you to be careful of how you speak in front of the children. You know what children are; they pick up all kinds of words and repeat them in front of their elders—and guests. You understand?’

  She stared at him for a moment before she replied, ‘Aye, sir. Yes, yes, I understand. An’ I’ll try.’

  ‘That’s a good girl. Now get yourself off to bed; you’ve had a long day and you must be tired.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir.’

  He had reached the door when he turned, and his head slightly to the side he asked, ‘Why must your father call on a Sunday morning for your wages, Ruth? Why can’t you give them to him during your leave time?’